


Every Inch of You

by jdphoenix



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-04
Updated: 2014-04-04
Packaged: 2018-01-18 02:30:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1411627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“This is not the part where we find out each other’s secret identities and fall into bed together.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Inch of You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [angellwings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angellwings/gifts).



> Spoilers for 2x18 "Deathstroke" and set in some nebulous season 3 future. (Actually I wrote this before 2x18 aired but somehow there are still spoilers. Go me!)

“This is really _not good_ ,” Sara says. She’s trying to break out of the netting holding them both down, which unfortunately requires a lot of wiggling.

“Could you - maybe - _not_ do that?” he asks. He doesn’t quite keep the bite out of his voice and he doesn’t quite care. It’d be a lot less annoying to have her doing that while half on his back if they hadn’t broken things off four months ago.

“Oh, _grow up_. Can you reach your arrows?”

Roy’s voice crackles over their comms as Oliver strains to reach an arrow that slipped from his grasp when they went down. “Where are you guys? I totally lost you after Sara crashed the car.”

“I didn’t crash any car.”

Oliver grunts in relief once he grasps the arrow and presses it into Sara’s hand to give her something to do other than drive her knee into his ribs.

“Roy,” he asks, “where are the thieves?”

“In the car. Well. Most of ‘em. One managed to limp away but Sara took him down.”

“I didn’t take anyone down!” Sara yells. Oliver can’t tell if she’s more frustrated that Roy keeps talking about her or that she didn’t get to hit anyone tonight.

“Cops ’re almost here,” Roy continues, not seeming to mind Sara’s anger so long as she’s far, _far_ away.

“You’d better get out of there, Roy,” Felicity says. “They’ll be right on top of you in a few seconds.”

“Go,” Oliver orders. “We’ll be right behind you as soon as we’re out of this.”

“Out of _what_ , exactly?” Felicity asks.

“ _Nothing_ ,” Oliver and Sara say at once.

“Okay, okay. Just asking. Jeez.”

“Are you almost-” Oliver cuts off as a figure steps into his view. Or, more precisely, a pair of long legs wrapped in fishnets step into his view. Oliver’s brain stalls for several seconds at the sight, long enough for the woman to get up close to him. He twists to get a better look and unsettles Sara.

“Hey!” she yells as her weight falls off him.

The net is heavier on him now and he’s even more trapped than before, stuck looking up at the woman in black. Fishnets disappear into a skintight outfit, wrapped in a leather jacket. Blond hair shadows her face but he can see enough to make out the mask - and the smirk.

She crouches over him and he tenses, ready for an attack. Beside him, Sara feels the change and falls silent. The woman pulls an arrow from his quiver and uses it to cut them free far faster than they could have themselves.

“Thank-” Oliver says.

“You!” Sara yells and jumps for the woman.

“What’s going on!” Felicity asks.

Oliver rolls his eyes and doesn’t answer. Instead, he watches the two trading kicks and punches. This isn’t the first time they’ve met the masked woman but tonight it’s obvious to Oliver that she’s holding back. He waits patiently for his moment and cuts in, putting himself between Sara and the woman. He takes a hit to his jaw for the trouble but it gives the woman time to back away to the edge of the roof.

“I let you go,” she says. Her voice echoes but it’s not the synthesized shift in tone they use to hide their identities. This is more like there’s a second voice coming up under hers, a barely held back scream. “I didn’t have to. Are you going to return the favor or are we going to have a repeat of last time?”

Last time involved Oliver, Sara, Roy, and Digg boxing her into a dead end. She didn’t hold back the scream then. It knocked any of them unlucky enough to be close to her on their asses and Oliver’s ears rang for a week. Felicity had to fake an ear infection to explain why she couldn’t hear out of one ear and she spent a sizable chunk of his fortune replacing the equipment the sound destroyed.

“No!” Oliver says quickly. He wraps an arm around Sara’s waist as she tries to move past him. “No repeats. Go.”

“Are you insane!” Sara demands after the masked woman disappears over the side of the building. She spins in Oliver’s grasp and hits him. Hard. “You let her get away!”

He lets her go and heads in the opposite direction. They should get home. “She could have killed us,” he says. “She didn’t.”

“That doesn’t make her one of the good guys.”

Oliver bites his tongue and doesn’t say a word as Sara dogs his steps all the way back to the base. The others are waiting there and Roy’s first words are an apology - of a sort.

“I should’ve known she wasn’t you. I should’ve gone after her.”

“Damn right, you should’ve known!” Sara says. She delivers a punch that’s more affectionate than angry to his shoulder. “She’s not nearly as good a fighter as I am.”

“That,” Felicity says to her monitor, “and she wears a _lot_ less clothes.”

“Right?” Sara leans against Felicity’s desk, happy for some feminine support. “Right! The girl dresses like a stripper who thought vigilantism was a smart career change because she wouldn’t need to buy a new wardrobe.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be feminist among us?” Digg may be talking to Sara but he hasn’t taken his eyes off Oliver since they came in.

“I have nothing against strippers. Nothing wrong with a woman using her body, but that girl is practically begging for an injury. Fishnets aren’t going to absorb anything and the jacket’s _something_ at least but every time I see her the sleeves are rolled up like she’s never heard of deflecting a blow.”

“She did a fine job against you tonight,” Oliver says.

The tension in the room spikes. No one moves but he can feel the others shifting their body weight, getting ready to move out of the way if Sara decides to fight him over the statement. Before she can choose either way, he sighs and forces the tension out of his body.

“I’m sorry. I think I’m done for the night. Can you guys handle things without me?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer and heads for the back to change.

“Did _Oliver_ just tell us he was taking the night off?” Felicity asks. The sound carries down in the basement, no matter how they try to keep their voices down.

“Has he ever done that before?” Roy asks.

“Nope,” Digg says. He doesn’t sound surprised or worried and it effectively ends the conversation. For that Oliver is thankful. He knows he’ll have to explain his mood to Digg later but for now, it’s a relief to have the others off his back so he can _think._

Unfortunately, try as he might to work his way through this new problem while he showers away the grime and sweat of the night, all roads seem to lead to a pair of legs in fishnets.

* * *

 

When she’s done for the night - clean and sparkly and wrapped up in sweats and a comfy turtleneck - she’s still holding the arrow. She set it down long enough to shower and change but that’s it.

She tosses used up cotton swabs in the trash (there was some blood on the arrowhead from when she used it to slash a mugger’s hand on the way home) and really _looks_ at it. She’s seen the arrows before, had one held to her throat once even, but this is the first time she’s gotten the chance to examine one at her leisure. It’s also the first time she’d really appreciate one.

It looks like him - now that she knows the real him.

An archaic weapon for a man who pretends to live in his own past.

She spins it in her fingers, holds it between her hands, lifts it to her eye and imagines staring down it at someone’s heart.

There’s a knock at the door. Four a.m., not many people it can be. She grips the arrow tight and goes to see who it is.

Oliver’s standing in her hallway. She’s not exactly surprised.

“It’s four o’clock in the morning!” she calls through the door.

“And I saw your light on! Let me in before we wake the neighbors!”

She’s careful to hold the arrow behind her as she opens the door. He comes in holding a carton of ice cream ahead of him as a peace offering.

“Rocky road?” he asks.

“At four in the morning? Hell yeah! You know where the spoons are.”

She lets him go on ahead while she locks up, then hurries to the living room. There’s a small stand to one side of the room topped with a vase and a scarf that doesn’t flatter her at all. She hides the arrow inside its folds. When he finally comes in, she’s curled up against the arm of the couch.

“So,” she says, “are you gonna tell me why you were in my neighborhood at four in the morning?”

He hands her the carton and takes one, heaping spoon out. He sticks it straight into his mouth and her own brain half-freezes in sympathy. He walks the short length of her living room several times, gesturing to his over-full mouth as he tries to work the ice cream down. She laughs at him.

Finally he gasps for breath and says, “I thought I’d pick up something of mine you took.” He reaches for the stand by the wall and flips the scarf open.

She takes her time sucking the ice cream off her spoon. He waits.

“Souvenir from an old case,” she says, “when the vigilante was still going after every white collar criminal in Starling.”

“ _Laurel._ ” This is serious Oliver, the one he brought back from the island, who he tries to hide behind a playboy mask.

She sighs and sets the ice cream aside. “What do you want me to say, Ollie? We both know neither of us can say anything without giving ourselves away and we won’t do that-”

“I thought I just made it pretty clear I’m the vigilante,” he says.

She has nothing to say to that. He’s spent over two years lying to her. She gets that he had his reasons. She’s not angry. Not very, at any rate. But that he’d just come out and say it now means something. She’s not sure she wants to know what.

He seems to mentally regroup and joins her on the couch. He reaches for her and she lets him because he let her first. He trusted her not to attack him on the roof earlier even though he was vulnerable. Now she’s returning that good faith. He tugs at the collar of her turtleneck and she lets out a startled, warning noise. It comes out with a high-pitched undertone, enough to confirm what he already knows.

When he sees the scar his eyes go hard, the way they are behind the mask. She’s not surprised people don’t recognize him. She doesn’t. She can’t see the boy she loved in this face. She thinks he might be dead. The girl he loved might be too.

“Who did this to you?” His voice is black, all rage and fury. It doesn’t help that his hand is very close to her throat. He sees what he’s doing to her and drops his hand and his eyes. She pushes her collar back up.

“I’m sorry,” he says. He puts his elbows on his knees and flexes his hands repeatedly. “I just - I need to know. Was it Slade?”

“Do you really want to talk about Slade right now?” she asks. It’s a serious question. This is about _them_. Hence the ice cream. There’s plenty of time for this to be about other people later, but there’s only going to be one right now and no telling when they’ll get a moment like this again.

He sees all of this on her face and takes her hand. “No. I don’t.” His thumb moves over her knuckles and he grips her fingers tight. “Why are you doing this?”

“To help people. And because I spent several months being psychologically tortured so now this seems normal. You?” It’s the truth, brutal as it may be. He squeezes her hand and then he does something amazing. He actually smiles and it makes her feel a little better.

“Five years being psychologically and physically tortured. And the helping people thing, of course.”

“Of course.” She grins.

He sobers quickly. “This is dangerous work, Laurel. You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.”

She pulls her feet under her, away from him, but he keeps his hold on her hand. “I’m not ‘getting into’ anything. I’ve been in this for months and that’s not going to stop just because I quit wearing a mask.”

“You’re taking unnecessary risks. You’re not even protecting yourself. I mean -” He runs his free hand through his hair. “ _Fishnets_?”

She laughs. It’s nice. She either hasn’t had reason or hasn’t let herself do it in months. It’s impossible without the sound of her new voice coming through, she just can’t control it. If she could, she supposes, it wouldn’t be laughing.

She puts a hand to her throat. “These are the only scars I’ve gotten in the last seven months and even they’re fading.”

“The mirakuru,” he says heavily.

“That’s actually a long story,” she admits. “One that requires something with a little more kick than ice cream and that’s kind of an issue with me so…” She smiles, tries to get him to too, but he’s pulling away.  She follows and rubs a hand over his back. “This is not your fault. Some asshole hurt me. That’s on _him_ , Oliver.”

She forces her hand into his again and he holds tighter than ever.

“I hate the wig,” he says.

“It doesn’t look _that_ bad.” She falls back against the arm of the couch but he keeps his grip on her.

“It’s not that,” he says quietly, his eyes on her face. “I just prefer when you look like you.”

She looks away. It’s been a while since he complimented her, even longer since he really had the right to. She’s not sure how it makes her feel.

“So,” he says, his light tone forced, “how long have you known?”

She’s better at faking it than he is and says lightly, “Since before the torture.” Though, now that she thinks about it, that was probably the start of it. She doesn’t think she’ll ever forget that moment when the truth of it was dropped in her lap and her whole world went spinning. He doesn’t need to know that though. “What about you? How did you figure it out? When?”

“Just tonight. I still haven’t told-” He cuts off and she kicks him lightly in the thigh.

“ _Sara_?” she asks teasingly. “The two secrets kind of went hand-in-hand.”

“Yeah,” he says with obvious relief. “I didn’t think it was the sort of thing that should come from me.”

“Good.” She doesn’t want Sara to know yet. Oliver’s concern is bad enough. “So _how_ did you figure it out?”

“Oh.” He laughs. “That.” He drags his eyes slowly up to hers. “I … recognized your legs.”

“ _What_?” Laurel’s not sure if she should be angry or embarrassed or flattered. In the end she laughs.

“I really like these legs!” He slips one hand around her calf. “I spent a lot of nights dreaming about them on that island. I dreamed of all of you, actually, but your legs were always a favorite.”

He’s found a knot and massages the tension out with his fingers. Months of relearning how to control her own vocal chords is all that stops her from moaning.

“Oliver.”

“Hm?”

“This is not the part where we find out each other’s secret identities and fall into bed together.”

His hand stills momentarily before falling away.

“Right. Sorry.”

She ignores the apology. He doesn’t owe her one.

“Besides, the ice cream’s melting.”

He smiles and grabs the carton off the table to offer it to her. She takes her spoon with a grin. Together they finish off the carton.

In the morning, he’s gone and the arrow is still there. She leaves it where it is and sets out for a morning run. It’ll be a long one today, however far she has to go before the ache in her muscles drives out the phantom feel of his fingers on her leg. She doesn't want it distracting her tonight if she sees him again.


End file.
